The funeral eulogy of Senator Edward Kennedy was delivered on August 29th,
2009, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Roxbury, Massachusetts, by
President Barack Obama. Edward Kennedy (often called Ted) died after a long
battle with a malignant brain tumor. His death was seen as the end of the
political era that was marked by the Kennedy vision for the Democratic Party and
for the future of America.

Senator Kennedy served in his position for forty seven years, and at the
funeral there were many people who attended to say farewell to the man. Among
these were former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George Bush. The
marked presence of all those who came to pay their respects attested to his
diligence and service as a member of the Senate.

Before the service Vice-President Joe Biden gave a speech memorializing his
long time friend. In it the emotional Biden stated that Ted Kennedy was “never
defeatist, he never was petty – never was petty. He was never small. And in
the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger, both his
adversaries as well as his allies.”

During the eulogy, President Obama commented on Senator Kennedy’s work in the
Senate when he said that the world would remember “Edward as the heir to a
weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic
Party; and the lion of the United States Senate – a man whose name graces nearly
one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred laws himself.”

The Kennedy family tragedies were also highlighted when President Obama spoke
in the eulogy about Edward’s good spirit and humor and how “That spirit of
resilience and good humor would see Teddy through more pain and tragedy than
most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw
two more taken violently from a country that loved them. He said goodbye to his
beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his life. He narrowly survived a
plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews,
and experienced personal failings and setbacks on the most public way possible.”

“It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would
have been easy for Ted to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender
to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in
peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that. But that was not Ted
Kennedy.”

President Obama went on to say that Ted Kennedy was the type of man who
helped to be the father figure for both John and Bobby Kennedy’s children after
their deaths. This included doing everything from camping and sailing to
walking Caroline Kennedy down the aisle when she was married. He summed this up
by saying that “not only did the Kennedy family make it because of Ted’s love –
he made it because of theirs.”

President Obama closed the eulogy by saying that “Ted Kennedy has gone home
now, guided by his faith and by the light of those that he has loved and lost.
At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing
with the memories he gave, the good that he did, the dream he kept alive, and a
single, enduring image – the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled,
smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for whatever storms may come,
carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon.”

After the funeral service Ted Kennedy was laid to rest next to his brothers
John and Bobby in Arlington National Cemetery.

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